A successful marketer knows that part of the big sell to customers is all in the language — and it seems Apple doesn’t want to use that dirty “F” word in its App Store to push apps anymore. Customers started noticing recently that on most applications that don’t cost a penny, the button to download them has changed from “FREE” to “GET.” [More]

Guests coming late to a party tend to like making a grand entrance. Apparently that’s Taco Bell’s plan as the company blacked out its social media and internet presence in an attempt to drum up excitement for its latest innovation: an app that lets customers order meals and prepay. Sound familiar? That’s because Starbucks, McDonald’s and other eateries have already announced similar services. [More]

Have the urge to send a Facebook message to your ex at goodness knows what time in the morning saying Zeus only knows what? If you want to make that mistake on your phone, soon you’ll have to download the social network’s entirely separate Messenger app, or forever keep your peace. Until the next time you hang out with your pal tequila, at least. [More]

Ray likes Roadninja, a free mobile app that tells users what amenities and gas prices are available at the next highway exit. He doesn’t think it’s perfect, though. That’s why he was kind of annoyed when it prompted him to leave a review…and his options were limited. [More]

Selling off the parking spot you’re about to vacate sounds like a win-win — you get some money and someone else gets a place to put a car. Oh but the thing is? It’s probably not legal if that’s a public spot, like in San Francisco, where the city attorney has warned a mobile app that it can’t help people auction off such spots. [More]

Seems like someone over at Facebook had an itchy trigger finger, as the social media site released a new Snapchat rival photo service yesterday that it didn’t mean to show to the public yet. It’s since been pulled, and Facebook admits that it was a bit premature. [More]

If you’re like me, you spend plenty of time muttering, “No I do not want to log in using my Facebook profile!” while accessing other sites. Because why does the fundraising site du jour need to know I like a bluegrass band called No Vests On Our Chests? It doesn’t, so Facebook has now updated the privacy controls on those connected logins. [More]

How much would you pay per month for an unlimited coffee pass? If you drink coffee daily and don’t brew it at home, that could become a pricey addiction. Yet CUPS, an app out of Israel, recently expanded to this country. Its premise is simple: subscribe and get discounted or even unlimited coffee from independent coffee shops for a discounted price. [More]

Eyes glazed, staring at the screen, a tiny pearl of drool juuust forming at the crease of a slack-jawed mouth… The Flappy Bird addicts out there (and you know who you are) only have themselves to blame for the game vanishing from app stores, says its developer. [More]

Anyone who’s ever eaten an entire cake in one sitting knows that yes, it is possible for there to be too much of a good thing. And that goes for inedible things as well: The sudden success of mobile game Flappy Bird appears to have been too overwhelming for its developer, who pulled the mega popular game from app stores yesterday say he just “cannot take this anymore.” [More]

While Apple has long prevented wireless companies from force-placing cruddy, memory- and battery-sucking apps on its iPhones, most Android users have phones loaded with apps from their wireless providers and phone manufacturers that will probably never be used but which can’t be removed. Realizing that this is a mammoth annoyance to consumers, regulators in South Korea have banned the practice. [More]

Because there’s nothing children love more than animated fat-shaming and liposuction, a supposedly youngster-friendly plastic surgery app has popped up in various forms (and has also been taken down) on both Google Play Store the and Apple App Store. [More]

Have you ever downloaded an app that didn’t seem like it was going to chew up a ton of data only to later find out that it was devouring megabytes without you knowing? A wireless industry group has put together a website that measures data usage on the most popular iOS and Android apps (sorry Windows phone users) so consumers can know what to expect before they download. [More]

I’ve always been a bit perplexed by Shazam, the app that listens to music and other media and (hopefully) identifies it. That alone can be useful, especially when you’re out somewhere and trying to figure out the name of a song playing in the background, or the artist performing said song. Problem is, it always took so darn long for Shazam to start up that it rarely had the time to listen to a sufficient portion of the tune I desperately needed to name. Now the makers of Shazam have figured out a way to speed up that process — by always having the app listening to your every sound, even when the phone is locked. [More]

Do your kids feel that board games are ho-hum without advertising from some of the world’s biggest brands? Maybe your girls and boys are bored with the virtual tooth fairy they already have (yes, this exists) and the only way to make them happy is to pay more to unlock a VIP edition? Or does your potty-training youngster cry because he or she has to take their eyes away from the iPad for a few seconds while they do their digestive duty? Then we have some toys for you! [More]

A group of mobile security researchers say they have discovered a vulnerability in many mobile apps running on iOS that could allow a hacker to hijack the information being provided to a mobile device when used over an unsecured WiFi network. [More]

It’s kind of like that song lyric, “Do a little dance, make a little love/get down tonight.” Except in this case the little dance is Amazon’s tricky runaround of Apple’s app restrictions, the love-making is a free sample of an e-book and getting down tonight is well, reading, I suppose. Amazon has pulled off a neat trick with its latest update to the Kindle iOS app in order to skirt Apple’s rules about in-app purchases.

A couple years back, Apple came under fire from parents and regulators after reports that kids were making in-app purchases, sometimes to the tune of four figures, on their folks’ iPhones and iPads. The company has since changed its policy to prevent children from draining their parents’ wallets in this fashion, but that didn’t stop the class-action lawsuit from the people who’d lost money before the policy change. [More]